About the Voyeur

Who is Susan Braudy?

My beat is Manhattan. Even though I am an insider, this city always surprises.

On Manhattan sidewalks, and even in restaurants, people don’t notice when you cross the line between looking and staring.

My background: urban voyeurism, author of five books and lots of blogging for Huffington Post and writing for print media such as the NY Times, Glamour, Financial Times of London, Ms, New York Daily News. I also wrote screenplays for such as Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, and Frances Coppola, studio executive.

When I hit our electric streets, I feel the bingo bam buzz, an instant adventure in thought, sites, sounds, and people coming at me. Models and murderers. Pets and kids. Okay, I’ve admitted I’m a voyeur. I love eavesdropping on intimate conversations in French, English, and a hundred languages I don’t speak.

Even indoors, I am thrilled to look down on Central Park stretching out long like a rain forest as people and cars move in synchronicity.

Living in Manhattan is better than living in Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon.

For years, I have experienced the wonder of serendipity in the big city. At E.A.T. restaurant I lose my appetite but am captivated by an explicit description delivered by a debonair Englishman sitting near me of stalking, killing and cutting off a fox’s tail – his murderer’s trophy.

In Central Park I stumble upon a marijuana deal and can’t resist interviewing dealer and buyer. I’m totally fascinated and sometimes that breeds fearlessness.

At the TGIF bar I sip tomato juice and listen to a tipsy traveling salesman shamelessly describe picking up a girl and their ensuing one-night stand in Atlanta.

I go to a doctor’s appointment and stumble upon an amazing shop on a side street where children paint ceramics and where affordable samples are incredible works by a recent, talented graduate of the Chicago Art Institute.